


Alliance

by theoneandonlyzoom



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, Kylux Secret Santa 2019, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:21:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21788959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoneandonlyzoom/pseuds/theoneandonlyzoom
Summary: This meeting of theirs would set the tone for every one preceding it, a series of tense and often loud disputes—tense on both sides, though predominantly loud on Ren’s. And Hux, of course, was right.It didn’t work at all....Until it suddenly did.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 8
Kudos: 194
Collections: Kylux Fanworks Secret Santa 2019





	Alliance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [squire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/squire/gifts).



> A/N: This is a secret santa gift for **squire** , just a snap-shot of the transition of power following TLJ. I feel like Ren and Hux need to get on the same page if they want to succeed in any way, however small, in the last installation of the trilogy.
> 
> Happy Holidays, everyone!
> 
> Edit: squire, I am so sorry!!! I didn't realize I posted it as draft instead of an actual post until today.

The first time Ren lays eyes on him, they’re standing shoulder to shoulder in the holo-chamber, waiting for their audience with the Supreme Leader.

Copper hair, green eyes, and the fairest complexion Ren had ever seen, almost as white as stone—General Armitage Hux was something of a vision, and his immediate ire, while unwarranted, did nothing to deter Ren from commending his slim figure to memory. There was just something oddly alluring in the gentle furrow of his brow and the flare of indignation in his eyes when Snoke bestowed the ‘honor’ of co-commandership upon them, that familiar lick of passion that fueled almost evert acolyte of the Dark Side. Even if Hux could maintain his composure, it felt good knowing Ren could get a rise out of him, that they operated, at least on the most basic level, at the same frequency.

Hux said barely anything at all to him during their introductions. This, Ren would learn, was how Hux usually operated, with few words, hoarding them away until the damage was done and he knew that his quarry had nowhere left to go. In fact, he didn’t speak directly to Ren until they were in the lift together. Staring straight ahead, gaze focused on the door, hands folded neatly together behind his back as they ascended to the main deck, he finally said, “This won’t work.”

Ever so slightly, Ren inclined his head toward him. Voice strained through the vocoder, he said, _“Is this a formal resignation?”_

There was a nasally huff of air from Hux and the barest curl of contempt at the corner of his lips. “Hardly. The Supreme Leader might think you’ll find a place here with us, but I can already tell you don’t care one whit about blending seamlessly into our organization.”

 _“What gave me away?”_ Ren asked, amused with the other man’s lack of charm.

Hux turned to look at him then, giving him a lazy once-over, as if he found something so utterly lacking in the tall, dark spectre standing before him. “The Supreme Leader informed me ahead of time that you would be coming. He shared a holo-image of you. Without the mask.”

It was those last words that wiped the smirk off Ren’s lips.

“You’re not disfigured,” Hux continued. “The mask’s simply a poor attempt at scare-tactics. You’re just a boy playing dress-up in his grandfather’s uniform.”

Hands clenched into fists at his sides, Ren had to fight the urge to squeeze the General’s tender throat. Snoke was clear on who Ren could or could not discipline with the Order, although why the Supreme Leader would see it fit to share such sensitive information with this mere mortal is beyond him. He supposes it’s to take him down a peg, to remind him that the only person who can’t be humbled here is Snoke himself.

Fortunately, Snoke told him a thing or two about the General in return, perhaps to even out the playing field. _“Better that than a bastard son wallowing in his father’s shadow,”_ he replied.

There was another flicker of hatred in Hux’s delightfully green eyes. It eased the sting of Ren’s own anger, knowing that he had such a pretty little thing to torment while he worked alongside the First Order, this uppity officer with no power and no real purpose in life beyond serving his masters.

This meeting of theirs would set the tone for all the ones preceding it, a series of tense and often loud disputes—tense on both sides, though predominantly loud on Ren’s. And Hux, of course, was right.

It didn’t work at all.

~***~

Ren stands in the lift, hands at his sides, cloak hanging heavily on his shoulders as he wonders what horrors tomorrow will bring.

He’s lost to Luke, he’s lost to Rey, and he’s lost to his mother.

It’s a wonder no one has tried to wrest his newfound power from him just yet.

Of course, it helps that his Knights have returned to him from all corners of the known universe, an army more capable than the First Order itself. It helps, too, that the First Order is a much larger organization than even the Resistance gave it credit for, and that its senior-most officers are still ready to mobilize their forces virtually the day after Snoke’s demise, marking the beginning of a full scale invasion against several Republic-friendly planets. Everyone is kept busy, the many pieces of their forces moving together like clockwork, and as long as this this operation continues seamlessly, no one should have any reason to oppose him.

Ren knows he has Hux, in part, to thank for this smooth transition.

Even after having been hurled unceremoniously into an AT-AT console, the General continues his work with the same unspoken level of authority as before this unorthodox shift in power, sequestering himself away in his office or haunting the Bridge, keeping to Ren’s periphery, except when sending a written request for Ren’s input on more pressing matters. Ren is grateful, in a way, because Hux affords their organization the illusion that the so-called upper management is just as resilient as advertised, but he’s also concerned, because if anyone has a chance of rallying the troops for a successful coup, it’s Armitage Hux.

Inevitably, they need to speak. Or, rather, _Ren_ needs to speak with _him_ , to find the opportunity to parse through his mind and determine how much of a threat the General really is—so he gets a hold of Hux’s working schedule for the next cycle and drops by his office unexpectedly at the delicate point between shifts.

When the doors slide open, a spark of apprehension and surprise alights Hux’s eyes before the General smooths himself out, both emotionally and physically, running a hand down the front of his uniform as he rises from the seat behind his desk. He looks as impeccable as ever, uniform freshly ironed, fiery hair slicked back, the dark rings around his eyes almost entirely faded. Hux stands with his usual cold confidence as Ren waltzes into the room, office doors sliding shut again behind him with a pneumatic hiss. For a moment, it almost feels like old times, back when they were on an equal footing.

“Supreme Leader,” Hux greets him, his expression neutral, his tone of voice non-threatening. There’s a thready pulse of anger beneath his cool façade, one that weakens with every passing moment, as though Hux has put an honest effort into practicing how to snuff out his ire. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“That’s the point,” Ren replies, approaching the desk but refusing to sit in the solitary chair set out for guests; Hux remains standing as well. “You’ve gone to great pains to avoid me these past few days. I’m beginning to wonder why.”

Hux gestures vaguely to his desk and the datapad that sits upon it. “I go where I am needed.”

“One would think that where you are ‘needed’ is where your superior tells you to go.”

“And where, exactly, would you have me go?”

A good question. Ren has already briefly contemplated sending him somewhere far, far away, separated from his allies, but what they say about keeping your enemies close is true. Hux is a danger to him no matter where he dwells in the universe. Depending on what Ren finds today, he might very well need to keep Hux closer than most.

Seeing no reason to delay the inevitable, Ren slips into his mind.

He’s met with the usual token resistance, a wall of anxiety and indignation, the kind of reception every Force-null individual employs when he first barges in uninvited. Hux, however, must be accustomed to suffering the same treatment at Snoke’s hands, because he lowers his defenses faster than most. This, at least, is a good sign; if Hux had anything to hide, he would’ve put up more of a fight.

Ren filters through his memories of conferences and private conversations, whatever social interactions Hux might have had with his closest confidents, and then he moves on to Hux’s internal workings, his transient thoughts and more devoted ponderings. Ren finds an abundance of anger directed at himself, not surprisingly, but even in those few, fleeting moments where Hux wonders how different life would be if Ren bit the proverbial dust, he doesn’t waste his time or energy making plans to oppose his new Supreme Leader. His experience with Snoke has taught him that Force-users really do have the higher ground when it comes to civil war, and he knows that working with Ren doesn’t mean sacrificing what he really wants, which is the First Order’s primary objective, universal domination.

Hux, it would appear, is much smarter than Ren ever gave him credit for.

Ren sees other things—some which are _quite_ useful to him—but he spares them no more than a passing glance before he retreats, satisfied. “You are not a traitor,” he says.

Somewhat dazed from the mental invasion, Hux takes an unsteady step back and lowers himself into his chair. It takes him a moment to collect himself. Then, calmly, he says, “Of course not.”

“You’re just another cog in the First Order’s machine.”

“I suppose I am. But don’t get me wrong; I crave power just as much as anyone. I just happen to know when to pick my battles.” He crosses one leg over the other, seeming to genuinely relax now that the worst is out of the way, having his mind spread out before Ren like a sea of stars. “Does that disappoint you?”

“Disappoint? No. Surprise? …Yes.”

There’s a small crook at the corner of Hux’s lips. The man so rarely smiles in Ren’s direction, Ren finds himself staring harder than he normally would at Hux’s mouth.

“To be honest,” Hux continues, “I wouldn’t know how to kill you—or, rather, I wouldn’t know how to kill you _and_ each of your Knights in quick succession. So long as one of them survived, I’m sure they would immediately seek revenge.”

He’s not wrong.

“You’re not stupid enough to try,” Ren agrees, somewhat relieved; he’s gotten so used to whatever it is that’s between them that he doesn’t know what he would do if he had to give the General the proverbial axe. “However, I can sense that you know a few officers foolish enough to assume otherwise, those who think that overthrowing me and my Knights is well within the realm of possibility.”

“I have my suspicions,” Hux replies casually, as if he knew that Ren would ask him to rat out his so-called ‘comrades’ someday. “I haven’t caught wind of any concrete plans to dispose of you yet, but I feel that’s only a matter of time.”

“I could kill them tomorrow,” Ren muses aloud, “to head off any such attempts.” He had better things to worry about without some stodgy old officers plotting a coup behind his back.

“You could.”

“I will.”

Hux shrugs, as if it were really no matter to him. “The sooner the better, I suppose. If they see you as a threat, they would probably feel more comfortable with me out of the picture as well.”

“Then I would be doing you a favor.”

“Indirectly.”

“Directly, I should think.” Slowly, Ren makes his way around the desk; Hux doesn’t move much beyond tracking him with his eyes, verdant and bright under the harsh, electric light of his office lamps. “What wouldn’t you give for that feeling of security, knowing that your enemies were swiftly eliminated at my behest?”

“What wouldn’t I give indeed…” Hux swivels his chair slowly to face Ren, then rises to his feet, not at all bothered by Ren’s sudden proximity after having his brain plundered by the man. But that was just Hux all over, wasn’t it? He knew how to get up close and personal with someone without seeming like a threat. It helped him build connections where he needed them most; it also put him well within jabbing distance when severing those connections was more of a priority.

Hux isn’t wearing his monomolecular blade today, though. Ren made sure to skim the General’s mind for it before he decided to approach him, knowing that it’s tucked safely away inside a secret compartment in Hux’s berth. Of course, a monomolecular blade is hardly the only close-range weapon at Hux’s disposal, but he already knows the other man isn’t looking for a fight.

He’s looking for an alliance.

“Any ideas?” Ren breathes, standing close enough to his companion that it would be all too easy to lean forward and kiss him.

“As if I need to spell it out for you,” Hux replies. “You’ve just scoured my brain. I think we both know that we’re on the same page.”

They are. Something Ren stumbled across briefly was a memory of Hux on the Bridge, about a year or so ago, standing with his hands casually folded behind his back as he watched Ren storm into the corridor. At the time, he was wondering why Ren couldn’t be half-arsed to find a better way to vent his frustrations than thrashing expensive equipment or personnel; simultaneously—and somewhat bemused—he was wondering if Ren was ever going to work up the courage to ask him for a fuck.

Ren takes a moment to ask himself if this is really what he wants. Even if Hux isn’t presently planning on killing him, he has his own agenda, and that agenda is subject to change depending on what opportunities are made available to him. He is also cunning and cruel and knows the ins and outs of their organization better than Ren ever will. Additionally, he has more allies here than Ren does, even if the lot of them are Force-nulls.

However, all of _this_ is exactly what makes Hux himself an equally appealing ally, the sort of man a leader would want to keep in power, to advise Ren and to maintain the cohesion amongst his officers. Hus also wanted, in a way, what Ren wanted, which was for swift justice to be brought to Leia Organa and her band of misfits.

Ren tilts his head to one side, taking the General in. Hux doesn’t move at all. He simply stands there, copper hair like fire in the light, breathing gently between his lips. His pupils are larger than normal; even if love is beyond him, the baser passions are not. He likes to take his pleasure wherever he can, though finding an appropriate partner outside his ranks is something of a nightmare.

It’s only fair that Ren provide him with a way to finally vent his own frustrations.

So, Ren ducks his head to kiss the General, thinking of that inhospitable soldier he met so many years ago, whose anger has now turned to a different kind of fervor as they move together downward, discarding their uniforms as they stretch out on the floor. Flesh moving against heated flesh, Hux’s legs around him, pale throat exposed, they make the sort of pact between each other that even the oldest of their ancestors would understand.

And then, in some miraculous way, it suddenly all works.


End file.
